Your fondest Chrysler memory?

Mine is my first car. A very used 1960 Valiant. Four door. "Midnight
Blue". Fake "Continental spare" hump on the trunk (which always
collected water and rusted).

Bench seat with 3-Speed on the floor! (99% of them had the push-button
automatic). Factory shift-knob about 7/8" diameter... felt like a
marble. Paid $175 for it with 98k miles on the clock. Never failed me.
Got it to 140k miles. Still ran great. (Always bought used tires). Just
burned a quart of oil every 200 mi. (I kept a case of oil in the trunk
;o)).

Finally attempted to drive it from Connecticut to Louisville, KY... just
before I had to go into the Army. Ohio Turnpike in Cincinnati. 5 lanes
wide. Tandem tractor-trailers all over the place. (Felt like I was
driving a go-kart). Evening rush-hour. Driving rain storm. Visibility
about 25 ft. Hadn't thought about God in quite some time. Then it
happened...

2 of 3 rusted studs holding drive-shaft to back of transmission snapped
off. Rumbling like a tank... max speed dropped to about 10 mph. Nearly
got crushed 3 or 4 times as I tried to make it to the right-hand lane.
Air-horns blasting all around me. Don't know how I got off an exit...
but I did.

Used auto parts / scrap yard at bottom of exit!!! Slept in car. When
they opened a guy tells me, "No sweat! We got loads of those Valiants in
the yard. We'll find you a serviceable transmission." They had over a
dozen. But every one was a push-button automatic. He called 5 or 6 other
yards. Same thing... all automatics.

Took bus to Louisville. Brother drove me north after visit. Flew home
from Chicago. If anyone needs a manual tranny for their old
Valiant?Dart?... I'll bet it's still there.

Jeff

 

I had one just like that. It had the three speed on the floor. I kept
having problems with the shifter rod coming out of the levers, leaving
me stuck during shifts. The car was rusted pretty bad when I got it.
The engine was in real good shape, thanks to the previous owner.
Most of them were automatics just like you say.

I later had a 1964 Valiant with the 273 V8 and 4 speed. It was not very
common either. It had over 200,000 miles on it when I sold it.

-Kirk Matheson

 

Hard to pick- all those good times 25 years ago in high school with my
73 Satellite, the first time I took my '69 Coronet R/T out under its own
power and discovered the true meaning of "torque," or maybe or driving
to work this morning in my '66 Polara

 

1949 plymouth coupe/convertible
rumble seat drop down in the back......

miss it

went MERCURY's after that........the classics 1951 1953 1954 1956 all
purchased as used. A few more Mercs after those. Back to Chrysler in
1978,NEW 360 powered van, then a used 1977 Plymouth Volare with a FACTORY 4
SPEED!!!!!!what a tank..rusted away here on the coast of Oregon, was running
as usual when it fell apart.

back to Chrysler.......NEW 2001 PT 5 speed

 

Wasn't that shift lever something??! Curved way up and back over the
bench seat. Never seen anything like it since.

Jeff

 

My 63 almost stock Imperial that could just barely lift the front wheel off the
ground on takeoff at the dragstrip. 413, 390+ hp, 500+ ft.lbs.

 

not particularly chrysler but a plymouth, ~1976?
vehicle stopped.
duh.
went out and lined up the linkage for the clutch.
had no clue what i was doing.
car went into gear!

another time.
stuck on a bridge.
not my vehicle. a commercial car.
car just stopped.
tow truck came.
just poured some containers of tranny fluid into the plymouth, also
~1976.
car started right up.

these were beat up vehicles with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of
miles on them. round and round went the odometer

my best was in a big rain, a friend's family valiant would not start.
the year? 1980?
no problem.
just had an extra ballast resistor. put it in at night. very easy job
even in the rain.
i thought they should have praised me to heaven like a god.
but they were too religious.

or my brand new dodge, there i am, still under warranty, taking out all
the spark plugs to check compression in the parking lot of the dealer.
was i nuts or what?

 

My first brand new car, fresh out of the Navy...
a 74 Plymouth Road Runner. Metallic Forest green, white stripe, white
interior. Had the slap-stick automatic, and a sun-roof. AM radio, with an
under the dash 8-track, and a pair of amplified 6x9 Mindblaster speakers.
(sigh)

Peace
Deke

 

1970 Dodge SuperBee 440 Magnum

Ken

--
"Now Phoebe Snow direct can go
from thirty-third to Buffalo.
From Broadway bright the tubes run right
Into the Road of Anthracite"
Erie - Lackawanna

 

When we lived in South Africa in the sixties we had a family friend who was
like a very friendly uncle to me. At some point he wanted to buy a new car.
IIRC he had narrowed the choice to two models and, knowing little about the
differences, had asked little ol' me for an opinion (kids know best!)

I can't recall the other choice but I said to buy a Valiant...and he did...

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling
---

[...]

 

Mine was the car I had my first date in when I was in the 8th grade; a 1960
Plymouth Valiant. Light blue with a 170 CID slant six and a 3 speed on the
floor. I drove it on the back roads to pick my date up and return her home.
It was the first time my dad let me drive the car alone. My family drove
that car for another 15 year and then sold it to a guy who's kid was going
to college. He drove it to school for 4 year and then we lost track of it.
You couldn't kill that thing. I had over 250K on it the last time we
checked. --- By the way, 6 years after that date (and many girls later) I
married that first date. We've now been together for more than 35 years.